We’ll make great pets / Dog POGs
*SIGH*
You know what’s depressing?
Vanity dogs. Not the dogs themselves (they’re more repulsive than depressing, usually), but the trend that has them riding around in the Louis Vuitton purses of fashionistas everywhere. THEY’RE LIVING BEINGS YOU MORONS, NOT ACCESSORIES! Does anyone else just picture that dog shitting all over Paris Hilton’s Sidekick down in the depths of that fancy bag she carries, completely unbeknownst to the paparazzi who sell the aDORable pictures to magazines? She wasn’t smiling two minutes later, boy howdy!
Have you ever pictured what people would look like if some other life form had kept them as pets and selectively bred them for thousands of years? There would be people who looked, more or less, like the wild people of old, just maybe a little more childish and sweeter than usual (I hear people seem to have bred wolves/wild dog ancestors for neotenic, or childish, characteristics).
Those people would be like the huskies and german shepherds of the pet-people. They’d have particular traits and deficiencies bred in. Just as shepherds are prone to hip displasia, or huskies are prone to impacted anal glands, these people might be hemophiliacs or have extra toes. But they’d still look like their originators, somewhat. And they’d all look a lot more like each other than real people do.
Then you’d have your pug-people and your chihuahua-people, who’d look so little like the people we know you might not even recognize them. What if our owners decided they liked small ones of us so much, they bred us down to where it was genetically impossible for our eyes to fit inside the eye sockets of our tiny skulls? What if they liked a certain type of stature so much, they bred for it even though it would mean the females couldn’t give birth without the aid of one of their veterinarians? What if it was more convenient (and attractive) to these beings to have people with no legs to speak of?
And then, after all that, what if they decided we were best kept strapped to their backs or on their arms, made to wear uncomfortable baubles that they considered precious, and forced to socialize with every other human being (or other one of themselves) that came along, whether we liked it or not?
What if some of them decided then that we were best allowed to be like our ancestors and live in caves and make fire and find fresh water to drink on our own, even though we had no idea anymore how to do those things? What if they got rid of us when we did something they didn’t understand, like laugh or get depressed?
Does anyone else remember the pot-bellied pig craze of the early 90’s? I just keep picturing what’s going to happen to these dogs when their cachet fades, or worse, when they beome _dated_ of all things. Many small breeds will live much longer than their impressionable, trendy purchaser anticipates when first she plunks down half a thou at the puppy mill. Dogs that are used to being carried everywhere will find themselves made to walk when they get old and can’t be trusted to keep bladder control in a fancy bag. (Or wait, what if the bag goes out of style before the dog does?). Either way, they’ll find themselves left at home when they used to be taken everywhere. Thousands of dogs bred for purchase towards the end of the trend will be left homeless, their value gone from hundreds of dollars to maybe twenty in the space of a few months. Remember what happened when you sat on your POG collection a little too long? Imagine if each and every one of those POGs was a living, breathing little life, and you’ll get a feel for what I’m saying.
Go buy yourself another clutch purse or chunky bracelet or something, for Pete’s sake. Leave animals out of it.
